“Oh, that’s always the case,” said the lawyer, “and that’s always for you to decide.”
He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feet, feeling that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hands, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch’s position.
“Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known to me,” pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, “I should be glad to have an idea of the forms in which such things are done in practice.”
“You would be glad,” the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client’s remarks, “for me to lay before you all the methods by which you could secure what you desire?”
And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face, which was growing red in patches.
“Divorce by our laws,” he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of our laws, “is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases. … Wait a little!” he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down again. “… In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without communication for five years,” he said, crooking a short finger covered with hair, “adultery” (this word he pronounced with obvious satisfaction), “subdivided as follows” (he continued to crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their subdivisions could obviously not be classified together): “physical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the wife.” As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and went on: “This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honor to apply to me in order